‘Perhaps you would. If you were a true White Prophet, and you felt you had a task to fulfil here, perhaps you would allow fate to sweep you toward us. If you had dreams that said you must come here …’
I shook my head. ‘I want to be at home. If I have a home left. I am no Unexpected Son. I’m not even a boy!’ Tears suddenly flooded my eyes and choked my throat. ‘We were preparing for a wonderful festival. Our Winterfest, when we celebrate the longest night and then the returning light. There was to be feasting and music and dancing. Dwalia came and turned it all to blood and screaming. They killed Revel. I loved Revel. I didn’t even know how much I loved him until he came with a blade stuck in him to warn us. His last thought was to warn me to flee! And they killed Perseverance’s father and grandfather. And they burned our beautiful horses and our old stable! They killed FitzVigilant, my new tutor, who came to teach me to read. I didn’t like him but I didn’t wish him dead! If I were a prophet, if I dreamed dreams of the future, wouldn’t I have known? Wouldn’t I have run away or warned everyone? I’m just my father’s daughter, and Dwalia wrecked our lives and killed people for no reason! You had her beaten with whips, but it wasn’t for all the terrible things she did! Those things you four sent her to do! She made Vindeliar trick that horrid Duke Ellik into killing all my people. And she didn’t even care for her own! She gave him Oddessa for him and his men to rape! Then Dwalia abandoned Reppin in the stone, and she sold Alaria into slavery and she left the Chalcedean to be charged with murder. Did she tell you what she did? Do you even know how horrible she is?’ I dragged in a shaking breath. Oh, I’d said too much. I’d vomited out the truth to her, without a thought or plan.
She stared at me, and her pale White’s face went even more bloodless. ‘Winterfest. The longest night.’ Then, as if my words had finally reached her ears, ‘Alaria went into slavery?’ she said faintly. ‘She was sold alive?’ As if that were the most dreadful of all Dwalia’s misdeeds.
Could a slave be sold dead?
Eat the food! Before she changes her mind and takes it away.
I tried. I stabbed the skewer into a lump of something purple and put it into my mouth. It was so sour my eyes watered. I choked it down and drank. Another unfamiliar taste. I stabbed something else on my plate. It fell off the skewer thing.
When I looked up Capra was gesturing to her guard. ‘A scribe, paper, ink, and set up a table here. Make this happen now.’ Her guard ran from the room. She turned back to me and her voice was intense. ‘Where did this happen? In what city was Alaria sold? What do you mean, Reppin was left in a stone?’
I suddenly knew I had given away things that could have been bartered. I had a piece of food in my mouth. I chewed it for a very long time. When finally I cleared my mouth, I said softly, ‘I don’t remember the name of the city. I don’t think I ever knew it. Dwalia would know, or Vindeliar.’ I quickly put more food in my mouth. It was the fishy stuff again and I wanted to gag but chewing was my only way to gain time to think.
She spoke gently. ‘A scribe is coming. You will sit with her, and tell her everything you can remember, from the very first time you saw Dwalia’s company to the day you arrived here.’
I washed the mush in my mouth down with water then asked innocently, ‘And then you will send me home?’
She stiffened. ‘Perhaps. Much will depend on your story. Perhaps you are very important to us and even you do not know it.’
‘I really want to go home.’
‘I know you do. Look. This little cake is my favourite kind. Do try it. It’s sweet and spicy.’ It had been on a dish in the centre of the table. She did not cut a piece but pushed the whole cake toward me. It was as big as my head and was surely intended to serve several people. ‘Try a bite,’ she urged me.
I chose a utensil at random, gouged a piece from the cake and took it into my mouth. It was delicious, but I was starting to realize everything on the table had a price. Even so, I took another bite and watched her suppress her questions. What did I have left to bargain with? She probably didn’t know that others of Dwalia’s luriks were unaccounted for, captured or fleeing in Buck. Did she know of the serpent-spit potion? What would she think of Dwalia’s romps with her captain? I wondered if she knew anything of Vindeliar’s magic or if that was a secret, too? If I bargained with her, would she keep her word?
‘Do you promise to send me home if I tell the scribe everything?’ I tried to sound childish and not as wary as I felt.
‘You will tell the scribe everything, and then we will decide. I expect it may take more than a day, for after you are done we will have more questions for you. Now, while you chat with the scribe I will find a nice little cottage for you, and a Servant to tend you. What is your favourite colour? I want to be sure you will like your new little home.’
I let my discouragement show. ‘I don’t think it matters. I just want to go home.’
‘Well. Blue, then. I’m glad you enjoyed your meal.’
I had not, and I hadn’t finished eating. I made myself set down my utensil instead of trying for a big mouthful of the cake. Servants had entered and were speedily setting up a table, two chairs, inkpot, pen-stand and paper. Just as swiftly, they snatched the plates and dishes from the table in front of me. Capra stood, and so did I. In seconds, that table and the chairs were whisked away.
‘And here is our scribe. Pelia, I believe?’
The scribe all but dropped to his knees. Her knees? ‘Nopet, if it please you, Highest One.’ His voice croaked as wetly as a frog’s.
‘Nopet, of course. This child has a long tale to tell you. Take care that you take it down exactly as she speaks it. Ask no questions now and dismiss not a word of what she tells you. This is of the utmost importance. Repeat my orders back to me.’
This the scribe did, with his eyes bulging. Was he terrified? No. The more I looked at him, the more he reminded me of Oddessa. She’d had the same unfinished look, as if someone had begun to make a human and then got bits of it wrong. Nopet’s eyes bulged and I wondered if his eyelids could even close all the way. His teeth were like a baby’s teeth in an adult mouth. He was setting up his desk and gesturing for me to be seated. When he took up his pen, I tried not to stare at his short, skinny fingers. He drew a page of good paper from the stack at his elbow, centred it in front of him, studied his pen, trimmed it a bit, dipped it and hovered it over the page. ‘Please begin,’ he said to me in his froggy voice.
It was the last thing I wanted to do. Capra was watching me. I walked across the room and sat down in the chair opposite the scribe. ‘What do I do?’ I asked him.
He lifted his bulgy eyes to meet mine. ‘You talk. I write. Please begin.’
I would not tell him of the day before in the town, where I had first glimpsed Vindeliar. I would say nothing of the dead dog and the beggar and my father going into the stone. Nothing of how my father had abandoned me to tend a stranger.